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Arts and Humanities
Abstract
Béla Bartók's relationship with the Pro Arte Quartet was not as personal as the composer-pianist's relationship with the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, the New Hungarian Quartet, or even the Kolisch Quartet. Professionally, however, it was equally fruitful. This study describes the relationship between the composer and the quartet, mainly based on the surviving correspondence between Bartók and the impresario Gaston Verhuyck-Coulon, and between Bartók and the Viennese publisher Universal Edition. It discusses in detail the circumstances surrounding the dedication of String Quartet no. 4, the commissioning of String Quartet no. 5, and the background to the surviving recordings of String Quartets nos. 1 and 5. It also takes stock of the plans that went up in smoke: the exclusive performance rights of String Quartet no. 3, a concerto for string quartet and orchestra, the studio recording of String Quartet no. 4, and the fact that the ensemble never met Bartók in person.
Abstract
Parnasso in festa (HWV 73, 1734), George Frideric Handel's festa teatrale, composed for the wedding festivities of his royal pupil Princess Anne, is a neglected piece within his oeuvre, mostly because of its hybrid nature. The fact that a considerable portion of the work was adapted from the Oxford oratorio Athalia ought not to cloud our appreciation of the newly-composed parts, since this appropriation is best understood as an act of Athalia's “repatriation” to its patrons. As a musical “centaur,” Parnasso shows intriguing multi-layered ambiguities. Was the Janus-faced Handel (Apollo/Orpheus) lamenting the departure of his favorite, or was this a bitter-sweet celebration of an unwanted marriage? Dramatically, the focus falls on Apollo's and Orpheus's loss of their loved ones, but how does this fit together with the massive vocal domain of Carestini (Apollo) and Strada (Clio)? On the vocal side, Carestini was given the most virtuosic numbers, resulting in the musical polarization of the main roles. Anna Maria Strada, as a Muse, represented the pastoral side, while Carlo Scalzi (Orfeo) added plaintive pathetic arias to the palette. Nevertheless, harmonizing points both in Carestini's and Strada's musical style and vocal tone formed a “thread” that helped sew the diverse parts of the Parnasso-centaur together.
Der Pester Lloyd als Quelle musikhistorischer Forschungen •
Ein Annäherungsversuch mit Beispielen aus dem 19. Jahrhundert
Abstract
The cultural exchange processes can also be formulated from the point of view of transfer research, because plurality and hybrid cultures are primarily characteristic of the Central European communication space. The actors of these cultural mediation processes, who had the authority to shape and transport knowledge and culture, were authors, translators, publishers, journalists, and critics. As far as the research initiative of the author of this study is concerned, which focuses on the period between 1867 and the turn of the century (around 1900), it must be stated that this period has so far been only sparsely investigated. As a result of our own wide-ranging press-historical research, a cultural-historical database of the most important German-language organs of this epoch was created, whereby the focus was primarily on the culture section, mainly on the feuilleton yield of these newspapers. In addition to literature and theater, there was also intensive reference to neighboring disciplines, since art criticism, art history and, last but not least, the musical stages in Pest and Vienna were given plenty of space in these organs. In the following, an overview of the history of the press is given in a compact form, followed by selected finds on the subject of music from the last third of the nineteenth century.
Abstract
Georges Cziffra (1921–1994) was one of the outstanding figures of Hungarian and international performing arts in the twentieth century. His adventurous life, career, fate, the virtuosity of his technical skills and his international fame have created a cult of his own, especially in recent years. However, his professional career and general biography have not yet been studied, and little to no literature has been written in the two and a half decades since his death. Thus, the reader/researcher can rely almost exclusively on his autobiography (Cannons and Flowers) and on personal reminiscences and anecdotes, which, as my research has shown, resemble a very limited extent of reality. My aim is to reconstruct and present an objective, fact-based biography in the current study, relying on the material of archives and other institutions and libraries I have collected, as well as on the complete contemporary digitized press material.
Abstract
Dénes Bartha (1908–1993), the internationally renowned Hungarian music historian, worked as a music critic for Pester Lloyd, the German-language Budapest daily newspaper between 1939 and 1944. Within the five concert seasons, I found a total of four hundred and sixty-five writings by Bartha in the columns of the newspaper, mostly reviews of concerts and opera performances but also some interviews and theoretical articles. The importance of the articles is enhanced by the fact that they commemorate the performances of such distinguished Hungarian musicians as Béla Bartók, Ernst von Dohnányi, Emil Telmányi, Ede Zathureczky, the Waldbauer–Kerpely String Quartet and the Végh Quartet among others, and they also document guest performances in Budapest by such renowned foreign performers as Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Willem Mengelberg, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Edwin Fischer and Walter Gieseking. In 2022, one hundred and twenty articles were published in my Hungarian translation from this extremely valuable and diverse material. In this study, I present the main features of Dénes Bartha's perspective as a music critic, taking examples from the articles included in the volume.
Abstract
Jenő Hubay (1858–1937) attained his greatest stature as the founder of the Hungarian Violin School. Although Hubay's name is mostly mentioned in violin pedagogy, he was also a popular composer during his lifetime. He composed over 300 violin works, and his role as composer is underestimated unlike those of contemporaries such as Eugène Ysaÿe. The present paper focuses on the performance perspectives in Hubay's violin concertos, by examining the historical background of each concerto, followed by a systematic approach to violin and musical techniques. This includes guidelines for determining tempo, dynamics/dynamic planning, bowing/articulation, tempo rubato, and portamenti/vibrato to create a style of performance appropriate to Hubay's works.
Abstract
I propose an overview of some of the defining aspects of Ștefan Niculescu's composition, some of which link him to his much better known contemporary on the world stage, György Ligeti. The musical affinities between the two have evolved into a steadfast friendship, reflected in a newly published correspondence that is becoming significant for slices of recent music history. I do not intend a comparison or an analytical parallel between the compositions of the two: the focus will fall on Niculescu's musical springs, with some signs of his and Ligeti's compatibility. Niculescu's heterophony versus Ligeti's micropolyphony, the impulses both received from mathematics, linguistics, the natural sciences, as well as the search (since the 1980s) for a new diatonicism that would configure an alternative system to serialism, all can be examined accordingly. It is also not uninteresting that both composers are convinced that they belong neither to the avant-garde nor to postmodernism, but consistently follow modernism.
